"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis
"I don’t believe
in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze

Note on Citations

The numerical citations refer to page number. The source's text-space (including footnote region) is divided into four equal portions, a, b, c, d. If the citation is found in one such section, then for example it would be cited p.15c. If the cited text lies at a boundary, then it would be for example p.16cd. If it spans from one section to another, it is rendered either for example p.15a.d or p.15a-d. If it goes from a 'd' section and/or arrives at an 'a' section, the letters are omitted: p.15-16.

[The first three subsections are my own overview notes. Under the Spinoza Ethics heading, there again is blue text, which is quotation from the English translation. My summary and commentary to this is bracketed in red. Deleuze's commentary is found near the end. The Latin text comes last.]

What's this proposition got to do with you?

What makes something what it is- this we call its 'essence'. We ourselves have an essence too. We might wonder what causes an essence to be what it is. Why are we some person and not someone else? Perhaps we might dream about being a different person, having his or her essence instead of our own.

Now examine some object near you. We might consider the causes that brought it into existence. This thing also expresses its essence, what it is. Other things can be thought of as causing the existence of this thing. But what causes its essence? Could it be that the fundamental stuff of reality is infinitely expressive, and this thing is one particular way that the underlying substance is expressing itself? As an expression, the thing and its cause are not removed from one another. The cause of the thing's essence would be right there, as its fundamental reality. And is it not possible to think of what underlies of all of what is real in this world-- can it not be thought-of as God? In a way, everything in the world around us expresses God, or at least we can say, anything in our world expresses what underlies all real things in the universe.

Now, we too are things in the world. Also perhaps we might regret our own limitations. We might wish that the essence of who we are would be somehow greater. But let's not forget, our essence has a cause, a reason for being what it is. This cause is infinite and eternal, and yet immediate to us. At every moment, no matter how weakened our essence becomes, we are expressing the infinite entirety of all reality.

Brief Summary:

God is the cause of all essences.

Points Relative to Deleuze[Under Ongoing Revision]

Things in this world exist only because difference creates the logical 'room' for their being. What allows something to be what it is, is its internal differentiations from itself. If something were self-same throughout itself, in a completely homogeneous way, then there would be nothing there but undefined form. Consider something simple like a circle. It would seem to be very homogeneous. But each point on the edge can only be a part of the circle by being different from the other points. In a sense, what makes a circle is the sum aggregate of all its internal self-differings, all the differential relations between its parts. So we might think that all reality is built on difference, and all real things express difference as their immediate ground. Difference is the immediate cause of anything's self-differing essence.

Baruch SpinozaEthicsPart I "Concerning God"Proposition XXV

PROP. XXV. God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.

[God is the reason for the existence of each thing. He is also the reason for the essence expressed by every existing thing.]Proof .— If this be denied, then God is not the cause of the essence of things ; and therefore the essence of things can (by Ax. iv.) be conceived without God. This (by Prop. xv.) is absurd. Therefore, God is the cause of the essence of things. Q.E.D.

[Let's consider the opposite argument to see if it leads to absurdities. So let's assume that god is not the cause of things' essences. Recall that knowing an effect meansknowing its cause. So if God is not the cause of things, then we could know the things without also conceiving of God.

Yet, we already established that there isonly one substance, God. Other than substance, there are only modes. Modes are conceived through the substances they modify. With there only being one substance, God, all modes then must be conceived through God. Hence it cannot be that modes are thought without also thinking God. So it cannot be that God is not the cause of the essence of things, for if really he were not, then we would not be able to think him while thinking of things' essences. Thus God is the cause of all thing's essences.]

Note .— This proposition follows more clearly from Prop. xvi. For it is evident thereby that, given the divine nature, the essence of things must be inferred from it, no less than their existence-in a word, God must be called the cause of all things, in the same sense as he is called the cause of himself. This will be made still clearer by the following corollary.

[God is infinite. He expresses infinite essence. There could then be no thing's essence which is not inferrable from his essence. It ison account of God's infinite essence that there may be any thing's essence. He then is the cause of all essences.]

Corollary .— Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. The proof appears from Prop. xv. and Def. v.

God produces as he exists; necessarily existing, he produces. [ft.3: E I.25s: “God must be called the cause of all things in the same sense in which he is called the cause of himself”[431]. ] [Deleuze, 100b; 364a]

According to Spinoza, God is cause of himself in no other sense than that in which he is cause of all things. Rather is he cause of all things in the same sense as cause of himself. [ft.20: E I.25s. It is odd that Lachièze-Rey, when citing this passage, inverts the order, as though Spinoza had said that God was cause of himself in the sense that he was cause of things. Such a transformation of the passage is not just an oversight, but amounts to the survival of an “analogical” perspective that begins with efficient causality (cf. Les Origines cartésiennes, pp.33-34] [Deleuze, 164a; 375a]

Modal essences therefore, no less than existing modes, have efficient causes. “God is the efficient cause, not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.” [ft.7, citation] Deleuze, 193c]

[from ft.8, Ch.12] The whole of I.24 appears, then, to me to be organized thus: 1. The essence of a thing produced is not cause of the thing’s existence (Proof); 2. But nor is it cause of its own existence as essence (Corollary); 3. Whence I.25, God is cause even of the essences of things. [Deleuze, 378-379]